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On Saturday night, on the sidelines of the Corona protests, several hundred right-wing protesters broke a cordon at the Reichstag building. They ran up the stairs to the Reichstag. The police officers pushed people back.
“The Reich flags and the far-right mob in front of the German Bundestag are an unbearable attack on the heart of our democracy. We will never accept it,” said Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), and the Federal Minister of Justice, Christine Lambrecht (SPD), also expressed criticism.
Steinmeier said that anyone who is angry about the crown’s measures or who doubts its need can do so, also in public and during protests. “My understanding ends where the protesters get hooked on the cars of the enemies of democracy and political agitators,” he added. Steinmeier thanked the Berlin police officers who had acted “with extreme caution” in a difficult situation.
Demonstrate a central civil law
Schäuble said: “It affects us all when a violent radical minority, clearly on the right, wants to assault the headquarters of the representative body of the people.” After these scenes, the latter should have understood “that there are also limits to decency, how far you can go with whoever runs with you. No one can avoid the responsibility of not being exploited by the extremists in their protest.”
Schäuble also said crown displays should be viewed differently. “The Basic Law also protects opinions that are seen by the majority as manifestly lacking in solidarity or even absurd. And the right to demonstrate is a fundamental civil right.” But it is not unlimited, everything has a limit.
“It is found where legal requirements are deliberately violated or where the state monopoly of force is attacked in the Reichstag building,” Schäuble said.
Schäuble also thanked the security forces who had prevented worse things. “However, the fact that this attack may even take place where the prohibition mile used to protect must be dealt with quickly and completely.”
“Enemies of our democracy”
Federal Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht calls for a tough response from the state to the escalating demonstration by opponents of the crown protection measures in Berlin. “Against these enemies of our democracy we have to defend ourselves with all coherence,” the politician told the newspapers of the Funke media group on Sunday.
“The unbearable image of the citizens of the Reich and the neo-Nazis in front of the Reichstag must not be repeated, neither in front of the parliament nor ever in parliament.” The democratic constitutional state guarantees the right of its citizens to demonstrate peacefully. “But those who attack the Bundestag and wave the Reich flag show nothing but hatred for democracy and contempt for everything that defines our country.”
The initiator of the demonstration and rally with tens of thousands of people on Saturday in Berlin, Michael Ballweg, has distanced himself from the protesters in the Reichstag. “They have nothing to do with our movement,” he said. The “lateral thinking” initiative is a peaceful and democratic movement, violence has no place there.
Ballweg sees responsibility for the riots in the city. He does not understand why Berlin Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) “does not have the appropriate police forces to counter such actions”, especially since they knew each other beforehand.
